IT Career JumpStart

When I first got into the IT certification game back in the mid-1990s, there were a handful of online properties that really ruled that world. In the past decade, however, the old guard has been slowly crumbling into oblivion, and falling out of the game. I was on the masthead of one of those properties — namely Certification Magazine— from 1996 until perhaps 2005 or 2006, so that kept me from getting too involved with another of them — namely CertCities.com. CertMag is still shuffling along gamely, but they’re down to one or two articles a month, with not much traffic or traction anymore, either.

For a long time, CertCities.com was a major IT cert news and info outlet. No more.

For the past two or three years, Emmett Dulaney has provided the only regular signs of life at CertCities, and kept on posting articles monthly long after all other signs of activity ceased. I just paid a visit to CertCities for the first time since January, 2013, and noticed that his end-of-month post there has not been followed up since. It’s been years since they’ve done any IT Pro certification wishlists, top paying certification surveys, or awards for best programs, providers, writers, and so forth. Perhaps it’s an excess of nostalgia, or just some kind of scheduling conflict on his part, but I can’t help but see the final winding down of this once market-leading certification portal in Dulaney’s failure to post either last month or this one.

Given the undeniable notion that “nothing lasts forever” and the well-known principle of “Internet years” (which, if I understand them correctly, are more like dog years than human ones), the patient is at least comatose, if not moribund outright. So long, CertCities: I remember your heyday, and I’m sorry to see you go. Even if Becky Waring and her crew would never let me into the fold, even after I bailed on Cert Magazine (after they tried to cut my compensation rate below what they first paid in 1996 or 1997), I still miss their content and coverage. Of the old guard from those days, only Anne Martinez (at GoCertify.com) and myself are still working the trenches every week, if not every day.

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Do you feel like your IT career is stalled or bogging down? Learn about skills development plus training and learning opportunities to improve your knowledge base and skill set. Dig into the pros, cons, and costs of college degrees and IT certifications at all levels.